Embers
by divine-firefly
Summary: Rei and Jadeite come to terms with the end of a fire. The sky is dark, and the encounter is lit by embers.


The moment he entered her room, she knew. She knew, and yet she let him stand there, in between night and her fire, letting light bleed out of the room. Closing her eyes, she banished the awareness of him, pushing it as far from her thoughts as she could, and concentrated once more on the flames as they danced gleefully through the air, begging her in a voice only she could hear to join them. With the pressure of her will, she forced them to be silent to be controlled as she had never done before, with a conviction that came from her desire not to remember him. She forced them to cease their dance, pushed them together into one burning mass, and then pulled it as a whole toward her, seeking knowledge and comfort from its depths.  
  
They were, as she had ordered, silent. She saw no shapes, heard no voices, did not feel the presence that had stilled her inner turmoil for all as long as she could remember. The quiet of the fire made her fearful, more so than any vision it had granted her. Fright made her angry, and anger made her remember what she had only half forgotten.  
  
Furious, she turned to him.  
  
He watched her with carefully calculated calm, his position the epitome of relaxation, only his eyes betraying emotion. She did not look at them, having learned long ago that looking into his eyes would herald her destruction, instead glared at his mouth and shouted.  
  
"You killed the fire! It won't speak to me!"  
  
A distant part of her mind told her she was being ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, but she did not listen, letting the flames of rage overtake her and slowly burn away her thoughts. "You killed it! This is all your fault!"  
  
Not even bothering to rise, she moved, pulling herself towards him, hoping to singe his collection, his calm—to singe it and destroy it and force him, somehow, to be as unreasonable as she was being. When she was in his face, she shouted again, "Your fault!" at the top of her voice, then struck him across the face with her open palm.  
  
He let her, and his compliance enraged her.  
  
Hitting him again and again, she screamed, "Fight me, damn you, fight me and hurt me and scar me like you did before! I know you haven't changed, damnit, I know you'll never change, so go ahead! Betray me again! You're going to eventually might as well be now." Somewhere in the torrent of words her shriek had turned to a wail, her anger to tears; they melted down her face and he gave her the first response she had received.  
  
His hand reached up to her back, and lightly traced a circle on her back before retreating to his lap again.  
  
The touch made her cry harder, collapsing onto the floor, her head falling in his lap, hair spreading like wings around and over her and across him as she fell into the softness of her memories and the sensation that was him.  
  
Regret seeped into her, as if the air was regret and it was pouring through her every time she breathed, regret for him, for herself, for what they would have been and what should have been. She closed her eyes against it, held her breath so she would not breath it, and closed her mind so she would not feel it, but it had already gotten into her blood—her heart beat it through her and she could not stop her heart.  
  
Frozen thus, they remained, twined together. At one point, he lay himself beside her, and she shifted that her head was on his stomach, and he tangled one hand in her hair. The fire shrank into embers and the room was full of darkness before he spoke.  
  
"Did you know?"  
  
She didn't move at the sound of his voice. No, she thought, not bothering to speak, I didn't know anything.  
  
He continued, obviously thinking she hadn't understood. "That it wouldn't work out? Did you ever see anything for us in that fire of yours?"  
  
She closed her eyes, and when she said anything it was in a soft murmur that didn't sound like her voice at all. "No, Jadeite, I never saw anything of us."  
  
There was a pause. "Don't call me that name." His voice was angry, and it shocked her.  
  
She stared up at a ceiling lost in darkness and wondered what his face looked like at this moment, and realized she couldn't see it, that she had no idea what he was thinking.  
  
A long time ago, I was intimate with his thoughts, she thought, and was surprised at her own bitterness. A sudden longing rose in her, to tell him, somehow, that their relationship had gotten to the point where one of them was bitter.  
  
"Once," and it was almost like telling a story to a child, except that she was almost painfully aware of his stomach beneath her and his hand near her face, aware in a way no adult was of a child. "You said that I was off balance, because I had no center of my own. You said that was why I clung to things so fervently, why I had trouble letting go." She closed her eyes against how painful this was quickly becoming. "So I made you my center, and I clung to you. And that would have worked, it would have satisfied me forever. You would have satisfied me. But then we died. And I was reborn into a different family, and they taught me to have my own center."  
  
She waited, wanting him to speak so that she would not have to go on.  
  
He said nothing.  
  
"My center, now, is me, Jade. My center is me, and the scouts, and my princess. I don't—" She took a deep breath, shivering under the weight of what she would say, "I don't need you anymore."  
  
The words hung in the air, a knife, poised to cut the last strands of whatever had held them together for so long, and tears came to her eyes.  
  
The next moment, he was gone, so quickly she wondered whether or not the knife had ever fallen.  
  
She lay in the wake of his disappearance, the cool wood on her back, staring up into a ceiling that might as well be a million miles away. She lay there for a long time, until at last she rose to her knees and crawled to the fire. The embers were almost gone, but one last flame danced to life at her prodding. It rose in the air, twisting toward her, and this time she did not cease its dance. Like a rose blooming, it opened to her, and she saw him in it for the first time.  
  
He was smiling, and she lay next to him, in a garden she half remembered. Lazily, he picked a lily and tapped her nose with it, she looked a little angry at his unworried destruction of the plant, but not so much that she would ask him to stop. She raised one hand in the air, and stared at it, framed against the sky. Seeing her do this, he raised his own, so their hands were together, side by side. Then she laughed, and rolled so she was on top of him, and her hair fell like a silky curtain around them both. He kissed her, and they lay together, rejoicing in one another's proximity. Then a child shouted, and she stood, laughing, to run towards it. He looked annoyed for a moment, then followed her to the child's side...  
  
In the room, Rei shook her head, confused. She hadn't remembered a child.  
  
Then the last flame danced itself out, and the darkness was complete.  
  
Out in the night, the man watched as her silhouette disappeared with the light, smiling sullenly. There was nothing left for him now but hope, and vain and stupid as that was, he had a right to it. It kept him floating in the river that was his life, kept him floating away from her.  
  
"Maybe next time" he said, his voice lost in the vastness of midnight, "Maybe next life."  
  
Then he turned, and was gone.  
  
a.n. part of a series of four I decided I'd do, about the shittenou coming back and they and the senshi coming to terms with the end of that relationship. I might complete it. I thought this turned out well. Send me any comments. I have posted the fifth chapter of the contract, for those who care, and I have completed the sixth. Computer trouble is causing difficulties. I will probably soon post one of this series I'm writing about mina and kunzite. Ta.  
  
D.F. 


End file.
